That's 60 times the current National Debt.
That's 64.28571 times the annual Gross National Product of the entire United States.
That's almost 15,000 times the entire budget for the City of New York.
If you lined up 900 trillion dollars bills, end-to-end, it would stretch...well, pretty damned far, I reckon!
That is the sum a Staten Island woman is suing the City of New York for, in a lawsuit over her children.
Fausat Ogunbayo, 46, had her children removed from her home in 2008 after the city's Administration for Children's Services (ACS) received several complaints about the crazy woman who left her kids home alone all day.
ACS caseworkers found that Ms. Ogunbayo suffers from severe mental issues that require medical attention. Since Ogunbayo never sought that attention, the City erred on the side of caution and removed her two sons, now aged 16 and 13, from her home. One report states that Ogunbayo actually wrote to her children's school administrators and told them that her children were targets of the FBI and Secret Service. Just why the believed they were being chased by the Federal Government is never exactly made clear.
Now, I don't know if Ms. Ogunbayo is, as they say, crazier than a bedbug. If she is, then I should damned-well hope that someone is going to put this woman in a padded room, for her own good. People who launch $900 trillion lawsuits and insist their family members are being followed by Black Helicopters are probably a little fruity in their loops, and in dire need of professional help. It's unfortunate that in this country we can find money to make certain that NFL teams get to build new stadiums, or there's money to build new schools for illiterate Afghans who don't value an education, while the mentally ill (dangerous or not) are left to fend for themselves, never mind their minor children.
She sounds insane, and trust me; I know insane when I hear it.
But just when you think you've got a cut-and-dried case of Delusional-Dingbat-With-Kids-at-Risk, along comes the worst of society's bottom-feeders to muddy the already-murky waters. Of course, we're talking about Lawyers.
Since no one can actually force Ms. Ogunbayo to take treatment, she hasn't had any, and that's thanks to the lawyers who have argued for decades that institutionalizing the provably insane is bad for their self-esteem and a violation of their civil rights. Of course, should a non-institutionalized dingbat come by and shoot seven people, including a democratic US Congresswoman, then it's a big deal with recriminations all around, all of a sudden.
So, while Ms. Ogunbayo doesn't actually have to have the treatment that trained social workers say she needs, and which her own writings almost prove beyond doubt are required,ACS still has a responsibility to see to the children's welfare, and decided to take them away, anyway. Which apparently pissed Ms. Ogunbayo's lawyers off, because not content to stand upon the laurels of ensuring a lunatic gets to roam the streets untreated, they had to take it one step further...
...and argue that even if you are batshit insane, demonstrably delusional, and inventing and living in your own Tom Clancy-style fantasies, it necessarily doesn't mean that you can't be a good parent. Some lawyer argued (to a real, live judge?) that the children should be returned to Ms. Ogunbayo's care and custody.
You know, the same care that saw them left all alone for extended periods of time.
Now, I don't know if Ms. Ogunbayo is a good -- if crazy -- parent, and don't particularly care. Bad parents are like dogshit in these parts; they're everywhere. But this is the part of the story that truly disturbed me, because it came from the mouth of a freakin' judge:
"Proof of mental illness alone will not support a finding of neglect," unless there's a causal link between the parent's condition and actual or potential harm to the child, said the court.
There you go. Even if you're psychotically mad, the authorities shouldn't step in to save a child's life until the Mental Patient actually does something to warrant it. You know, like douse them in lighter fluid and set them aflame to get the spiders off them. Or maybe open their stomachs with a butcher knife to let the little voices inside their belly buttons out. I'm just waiting for the day when an infant gets killed by his mother who dropped him from a rooftop to "scare the Devil out" of him.
Because that's how these cases usually end in New York City...with a dead kid. If you're an ACS worker in New Yorkistan, you can't win; you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
I'm thinking maybe Ms. Ogunbayo should be left to wander the streets, and her lawyers and the judge should be locked in the padded room, instead.
Then maybe we could give that $900 trillion we saved on the lawsuit to Planned Parenthood, so they can abort the crazies and the lawyers before they're even born. Sheesh!
This post also appears at the Insane Asylum blog. Please drop in and say hello!
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